Red Deerians build motorcycle and win first place in Calgary show

There are motorcyclists enthusiasts, and then there are these Red Deer residents — Kyle Schultz and Matthew Daly.

Schultz, 25, has been building motorcycles with his friend Daly for the past four years. In the past two months, the duo has been working every waking hour on their 1984 Honda CB650 to enter a build-your-own-bike show in Calgary. All the hard work paid off when the duo took first place in the inaugural Ran When Parked Show Saturday in the modern category.

“Honestly such an amazing feeling especially because I didn’t really expect to win anything, I just wanted to go have fun, and meet people who enjoy the same stuff,” said Schultz Monday.

It was the first time the pair entered a vintage/antique/custom bike show competing against nearly 70 custom-made bikes in two categories — pre-and-post 1984 models.

The two Red Deerians, and high school friends, named the motorcycle “Jim West”, because of its “outlaw” look and the added horseshoe foot pegs. Jim West is taken from the movie The Wild Wild West, starring Will Smith as Civil War hero James West.

Winning probably had to do with the amount of effort that went into the project, said Schultz, who is a motorcycle mechanic trade student.

“I think a lot of it had to do with the hand-made aspect to it, and you can see the hard work that went into it. (It’s) not absolutely perfect, but it’s just something somebody took the time to do. They didn’t go to a catalogue and order parts and bolt them on there,” he said.

Many of the parts on the motorcycle were from years of the pair collecting parts at swap meets.

“We swapped the gas tank on it, we made the sheet metal rear fender by hand, we made the side panels as well,” said Schultz. “We tried to make our own exhaust pipes, the handle bars – we found at swap meets.”

The duo also built their own intake system, exhaust system, and worked on various fabrication parts such as brake and shift linkages, and manufactured all the paint and body work on the motorcycle.